I've never been a Star Trek guy (I somehow missed that stage, transitioning instead from from Dungeons and Dragons to Little League to "who are those soft wonderful creatures with the little bumps in their chest") but when The Next Generation hit the air in 1987 I remember becoming conscious of and fascinated by... The Borg... specifically this piece of their "mythology":
The Borg are depicted as an amalgam of cybernetically enhanced humanoid drones of multiple species, organized as an inter-connected collective with a hive mind.
Now, as riveting as I know my childhood memories are to the general population, the REAL reason I reference this piece of pop-culture is to suggest that if you replaced House Republicans with Borgians (or Borgites or Borg-Staters or even Victor Borge) the vote on the stimulus package would have been EXACTLY THE SAME.
0 Yeah - 177 Nay
Dear Americans THIS is the Republican party you are left with... a crew of people (?) unwilling to defend the needs of their particular constituency (because, of course, there is NO WAY that the needs of, say, David Drier's affluent California district has much to do with the needs of the rural, hat and cattle folk represented by Denny Rehberg in Montana's at large, which has little in common with those living in the poorest congressional district in the country, Jo Bonner's, in AL-1) choosing instead to participate in the THOUGHT HIVE of tax-cuts, tax-cuts, "Dear God no ass-fucking" and tax cuts.
In alien encounters, they exhibit no desire for negotiation or reason, only to assimilate.
The tactic is decidedly short game, betting on the LIKELY fact that regardless of what President Obama does and even if their sainted Ronald Reagan were to come back from the grave, the economy will still be in the shitter a year-and-a-half from now when the 2010 elections roll round and the belief that the more recent "what the Democrats did didn't work" will trump the more logical "what the Republicans did got us in this mess in the first place," but what it fails to take into account is how the Democrats have gotten to where they are now.
Maddening and upsetting as it may be for us Progressives, the current wave of Democratic victories have NOT come through Borg-Size-Fits-All-Mentality, but by understanding that Heath Schuler's North Carolina district is not Sheila Jackson Lee's in Texas is not Barney Frank's in Massachusetts and that, if we want to be a national party, we're going to have to take some lumps in order to keep that coalition together.
So, bash the 11 who broke bread with the Republicans, but take some solace in the fact that the Borg are now ALL-IN, their entire stack of chips bet on economic collapse, forgetting that "We Saved Your Hard Earned Dollars" doesn't work when you're only "Hard Earning" LUCK.